John Winthrop

Context

Important Terms, People, and Events

If George Washington is the father of our country, John
Winthrop probably could rightly be considered the grandfather.
Almost single-handedly, Winthrop built up the Massachusetts Bay
Colony–the first major settlement in America–from three hundred
to ten thousand, firmly establishing a beachhead for the tens of
thousands of immigrants who would arrive in the British colonies
of America over the following century.

Winthrop came of age in an England violently fractured
over religious differences. Kings and queen fought off repeated
assassination attempts and coups brought on by whether they practiced Catholicism
or Protestantism. Born and bred in privilege, Winthrop attended
the best schools and soon found himself running the family estate
at Groton. Over the next decade, as three successive wives bore
him more than a dozen children, he gained an appointment to the
royal Court of Wards and Liveries and served as a local justice
of the peace. Always a spiritual man, Winthrop watched the increasing
corruption–physical and spiritual–of his beloved Protestant religion
with a growing weariness. He began to look elsewhere for moral
support and gradually fell into a sect called the Puritans. The spiritual
situation in England grew more and more dire, and Winthrop and
a group of fellow Puritans decided on radical action: they would
flee to New England and create a pure and safe community where
Puritans could live in God's world and serve God to their utmost
ability.

Winthrop and four hundred Puritan emigrants arrived in
Boston in the spring of 1630 after a rough and hazard filled Atlantic
crossing–like all ocean crossings of the seventeenth century. They
built upon the work of the settlers at Salem and established a
capital at Boston. Theirs was the fourth major attempt at colonizing
the New World; only one of previous three survived, that at Jamestown,
Virginia, which remained small and primitive. After a disastrous
first winter that killed almost twenty percent of the settlers,
Winthrop's bold experiment looked destined to fail. However, the
settlers persevered and by the following winter had built Boston
and the neighboring areas into a respectable community.

The New World posed many dangers to the new settlers:
Indians, French and Spanish privateers, wild animals, and the weather.
Perhaps the gravest threat to Winthrop, though, was finding that
the Devil's influence followed them to the New World. He spent
much of his time from 1632–1635 fighting back heretics like Anne
Hutchinson and Roger Williams who threatened to distract his Puritans from
the road to Heaven.

For twelve of the first nineteen years of the colony,
Winthrop served as governor of the new colony and often paid his
own money to build buildings or help families emigrate. By 1640,
the process of building the new colony had almost bankrupted him–but
he persevered and stayed involved in the government until his death.

By 1649, when Winthrop died, Massachusetts Bay had a strong foundation
to continue its spiritual journey. Each summer brought boatloads
of new immigrants, and the settlements grew by leaps and bounds
across the peninsulas of Boston harbor. The viability of Massachusetts
Bay, and by extension, the settlement of the New World, would never
be a question again.